Sir John Barrow

[This document is annotation to the author's transcription of Charles Dickens's "The Lost Arctic Voyagers" (1854).]

Sir John Barrow (1764-1848) had first-hand experience as a Greenland
whaler before he joined the British Navy as an instructor at Greenwich. Appointed
in 1792 as private secretary to Lord Macartney, the British envoy to China, he
travelled to the Cape Colony in 1797, and subsequently published several travel
books about his experiences in Africa and China (1801-04). As Second Secretary to
the Admiralty (1804-45), he promoted arctic exploration and founded the Royal
Geographical Society in 1830. Barrow Strait and Point Barrow in the Canadian
Arctic and Cape Barrow in the Antarctic are named after him.